Storage Uni's Server & Network Project! [Update 05-06-14 - Cisco Meraki Installed]

That's Adaptec and I have heard horror stories about them before, I think the Highpoint is about as good a card as money can buy, without going to 4 figures. I used the slightly smaller 8 channel version of the card I have chosen in a file server for a customer a while ago and it's still going strong.

At the moment all I need to get a preliminary version of the upgraded server running is a CPU and possibly a PSU... I'm expecting a warranty replacement for a 450W Corsair HX at the moment but I might not have that for weeks or months, so I think I'll get the CPU and a Corsair HX650 at the start of the week, then get it up and running on the new system boot drive. I'm still moving files around and trying to get almost 4TB of data organized properly in anticipation of the arrays being completed and running

 

Okay, it was an SRCSATAWB, which is intel branded, but an LSI rebadge. It posted garbage instead of posting.

As for the difference in using it in a server, you warranty is often voided if you use a hardware raid card in a desktop. To quote intel customer support:
"However, please let me tell you that Intel(R) RAID Controllers are intended to be used in server boards only. Other usage voids the warranty of the product. Even though we know an Intel(R) RAID Controller can work in a desktop board, it is not the way it should be used..... When the products are used in non-validated configurations, the results are unexpected/unknown."

So your array goes down when the card is down, you void your warranty, and you are locked into buying the same card again (or at the very least from the same ROC family) to get your array back. That is a pretty big disadvantage of hardware raid, and you should know what you are getting yourself in for.

 

OR.

When I email Highpoint to tell them if and when my RocketRaid 3530 card fails and they ask me what type of server it was installed in, I lie through my teeth and tell them it was in a HP Proliant server with 8GB of ECC RAM, two Xeons and an NC360T NIC.

How's that sound? To be brutally honest with you, you should have told Intel to expect a letter from your Solicitor on that one. If that line about "non-validated configurations" is actually in their CS literature, I'll never buy an Intel storage controller or device again.

It's a PCI-E card designed to be used in a computer motherboard with a PCI-E slot. If it's got a PCI-E slot, it supports it. End of. Honestly, the things massive corporations make up to avoid warranty disputes is unbelievable. Non validated my ass. I'd bet good money they haven't "validated" it's use in any server boards either

 

Heck, I'd go hardware RAID card if I was going to building a big, heavily hit array also. I had just been pointing out possible downsides.

 

Yep, well hopefully none of those downsides will come my way with this one

I've decided that at the start of the week I'm going to order the CPU and another couple of drives for it. I found a Corsair HX620W PSU in the workshop this afternoon that I don't think I need for anything, so I'll use that for now. If I need a newer (possibly more efficient) PSU in the future I can change it.

I've also won an HP NC360T NIC for it on ebay which should arrive some time next week as well.

 

Ok, well good luck. Just trying to warn you about potential pitfalls. Chances are I just had some bad luck, and its actually worked out not too bad for me (apart from a few weeks of downtime).

 

I seriously hope it was just bad luck. Did I mention that RAID controllers go through an equally rigorous and strict quality control process as the drives they manage? I couldn't afford to lose an array, we're talking about almost 10TB of data per array in it's finished form. This is why there'll be a backup NAS located elsewhere in the building

 

An i3 540 and another pair of 2TB Samsung F4EG drives are on the way for the server, hopefully I'll be underclocking that i3 by the end of the week

 

Will defo be keeping an eye on this
What kind transfer speeds do you get across your network?
I'm getting almost 100, which I think is the max since our router is the free one which came from BT or whoever, any recommendations?

 

At the moment because of the 10/100 switching hardware and Cat5 cabling, I'm only getting around 10-15MB/s. I'm looking to massively improve on that with the introduction of managed GbE switches and new Cat6a cabling

I'm a firm believer in Linksys/Cisco routers - my netowrk runs on a modified WRT54GL at the moment, although there's a WRT320N waiting in the wings to take over soon Both of those are running the DD-WRT firmware and the 54GL is cooling modded with an overclocked CPU and has larger antennas with a boosted TX signal.

 

If you're looking to sell the old router once the new one is in place, PM me
We get the same, what kinda speeds can cat5 do? :/

 

No problem mate, I'll keep you in mind - I'll be looking for a new home for it once the WRT320N steps in

Technically Cat5 is rated to handle Gigabit speeds, but it requires ridiculously careful laying of the cable and obviously Gigabit switching/routing equipment. Each twist and turn on Cat5 has to be perfect at each end of the line to achieve Gigabit speeds and because most Cat5 is unshielded (all the cabling in the house here is unshielded at the moment) it has to be laid away from noise/interference sources. Even switching to shielded Cat5 cable here would probably make a big difference to network performance after the new switches go in, because at the moment the cables are all laid alongside T&E power cabling in the attic - I'll be trunking the Cat6 where possible to further reduce interference and also to protect it from physical damage. One of the areas in the attic here is quite frequently used as storage space and I could see cables getting trampled on occasionally, given where they're going to be placed.

 

Hey unicorn,

I cant add much to this thread but what i can tell you and this is from experience, as I am a project manager for a commercial office design and build company, is that CAT6 has to be laid and fixed very carefully otherwise it will imped the quality somewhat. Similar rules with any data cable, but CAT6 is just more delicate. Treat it like a fibre optic cable and you will be fine.

Are you making the ends off yourself? Will you be testing the network with a fluke tester or similar? These are great as they give very detailed readouts and can save many hours of head scratching if things are not working.

If you need any advice on networks (maybe a silly question as I don't know you that well but...) then please let me know as we organise these for a living.

Cheers!

 

Really interesting thread this mate, some great information from people

Personally I have ran Cat5e throughout my house to every room and garage, all goes back to a decent rack mount 24-port gigabit switch in my office, having a gigabit in the house is brilliant, I can copy large files over the LAN at a good 70-80mb/s and I can't see why I would need any more, I did think about Cat6 but just couldn't justify the extra cost.

As for my home server, I am using a small mATX Lian-Li case with a decent spec S775 Gigabyte board, an E6600 @ 2.8ghz (stock voltage) and 8GB ram (4x2GB) I run Windows 2003 Enterprise on it and have dual NIC's connected back to my switch, I have VMware Server II installed and run 3 x VM's on the server, 1 being a Win 2008 domain controller. Its brilliant as the host and 3 VM's don't really put much strain on the E6600 at all which surprised me

Storage wise I have 2 x 500GB fast WD "RAID edition" HDD's in RAID1 for the OS and VM's and 3 x WD 2TB drivers in RAID5 for storage, all runs nice and fast and only pulls around 120W from the wall! I did have a Q6600 @ 3ghz in there which made it pull 250W + from the wall but as I never seen that much activity on it even with the 3 VM's so thought I would try the E6600 and even managed to clock that at 2.8ghz without any vCore increase (LinX stable) Happy Days

Anyway I'll stop rambling, if you want any pics of my lil set up I will post some up for you.
Good luck with your build and wiring mate

 

Cheers Rob! I know, there is information being shared in this thread that I don't know where else I would have picked up - probably nowhere to be honest! Netowrking is something that has always interested me but as I've said before, it was never covered in enough detail anywhere that I studied or trained to satisfy me, so this thread is a great opportunity for me to pick the brains of people who have the knowledge that I'm after

I'd love to see a few pics of your setup, seems to be pretty nice! You never know what I might pick up on

Hey mate, thanks for the input. Yes, I will be terminating the cables myself. I have a full kit for doing this including a Fluke DSP 2000 tester to verify the connections. It's not Cat6 rated but it'll do the trick I suppose. I don't much feel like throwing down £1K+ on a gigabit infrastructure tester since I only install a handful of GbE networks per year. Maybe if and when I'm doing more installations I will be forced to make the investment but gosh darn it test equipment is expensive

I have a small update to add - I received a Dell Powerconnect 5324 switch from Zoon yesterday, which has replaced the puny Dell Powerconnect 2216 which was running the workshop. It's now making full use of the Cat6 cabling in the workshop and I'm getting vastly improved transfer speeds between workstations on the bench and the server. I'm even getting better speeds between the server and workstations in the house, even though the connection is still a Cat5 cable. I will get that sorted and get the dual Gigabit aggregated link in ASAP though

I haven't done much with the 5324 just yet - basically just got it configured with some security settings and got it installed. I'll have a more detailed look through the options when I get a chance and see what more it can do!

One question for everyone - I'm using a WinXP Pro machine as a network share box at the moment, whilst the server is down for scheduled maintenance and upgrades (more on that later ) but I can't get it working properly with my Win7 machines. I should be able to force a client computer to request a password for a network share if that share is accessed by anyone who is not on the "permissions" list for the share - in Win7 I don't get that prompt, I just get the "you do not have permission to access this network resource" message. How do I force Windows 7 to ask for a username and password to a network share? The shares are all hidden ("ShareName$") so I have to access them using "\\HostName\ShareName$" and have the "everyone" permission removed but as I've said, I'm not being prompted for a UN or PW to them from Win7, I'm just getting denied access all the time. I've been through every topic that I can find on password prompted file sharing on XP and can't find out anything more about it. I just want to be prompted for the server account's UN and PW when trying to access hidden shares from the client machines. Any help on this would be appreciated, as the server is going to be down for a couple of days and I still need access to files on the network.

 

My pleasure I guess

 

Update & Questions - 09-08-11

Just a little update from me on the progress of this long and drawn out project, and some more brain picking questions for the networking experts of the forum

First of all, installation of the Cat6a cable in the house has begun. That's a few weeks early because I couldn't resist and had a few spare hours last week when the house was empty, so I took the opportunity and made a small start at least. The bad news about this is that I had to buy 400m of F/FTP cable The UK supplier that we order networking gear from has stopped stocking 250m drums of it, but it's ok because I have another installation to do in September that I'll need another 200m or so for which should use the rest of it up.

Yesterday I took delivery of the patch panels, Firewall (Cisco PIX 506e) and second Gigabit switch (Dell Powerconnect 5324) from Zoon, so I'm now itching to get the cabinets installed and the rest of the cable in, and basically light a fire under this thing! Unfortunately I haven't been successful in finding another 6 or 8 hours in the day since the last update, so I still have to be patient and take it one small step at a time. Again, the cobblers son goes barefoot

The arrival of the second gigabit switch has got me thinking about the aggregated link between the workshop and the house, and those combo ports on the 5324's have got my inner g33k wanting do do something with them. This is the question of the day: would a fiber optic link using SFP transceivers in the combo ports of the two switches be possible between the workshop and house? If so, would it carry much of an advantage over aggregated Cat6 links joining the house and workshop?

The reason I ask is because this is (obviously) a long term, very permanent installation. I want to do this as best I can now to make it as future proof as possible, and the other reason is that I have a 24 port switch for the house, and there are 24 ethernet sockets in the house... which leaves none for the ink to the workshop. It's not a big deal if I have to leave a couple of ethernet sockets in the house unplugged at the hub, for example the very rarely used spare bedroom has two ethernet sockets in it and they've never been used. Neither have two of the four in the kitchen, they're just there for future projects like video or audio over ethernet etc... But getting back to the fiber, I would really like to put a couple of links between the workshop and the house whilst I'm doing all this, and use them to link the switches if possible.

The only other news I have is that I've already started work on modding the Firewall and second switch. The Cisco PIX series seem to suffer from being very noisy, and the Powerconnect 5324 is very noisy as well, so I'm doing a few small mods to quieten them both down so they can live in a cabinet in a room of the house that can still be used without noisy networking gear buzzing in the corner

 

Go nuts Uni, watercool it

 

Combo ports are one or the other, the switch is 24 ports not 28 ports, sorry!!!

Good news for you, I just think the fan in the PIX is dying - replace it with another 40mm fan and you'll be fine.

Or get out the dremel and cut a 60mm or 80mm blowhole in the top and add a suitable fan

 

Haha, as someone who has hacked and cooling modded every router, modem or switch I've ever had, you shouldn't joke about that sort of thing! It could happen! . The managed Dell switches are noisy brutes!

I thought as much, from a vague and barely understandable description of the combo port function on another forum. So to clarify, I can use them as 24 port ethernet Giga copper switches, or 4 port combo switches, using fast Ethernet modules in the 4 SFP ports, or 4 port fiber switches, using fiber transceivers in the SFP ports? Have I got that right? So I now understand that the SFP combo ports are not actually capable of adding another 4 ports, but shouldn't I be able to use the 20 standard copper ports on both and then link the two switches together using a fiber link?

Bottom line, I have to use Cat6 for the workshop-house aggregated links whilst using the 5324's as 24 port copper switches, right?

Wayyy too late! 64mm blowhole has been cut (used a sharp 64mm holesaw) and a Fractal Design 50mm fan has replaced the failed bearing Coolermaster fan that was in there. I'm adding an inline potentiometer which will mount on the front panel, along with a mini LCD temperature display to show the surface temp of the CPU heatsink I'm just waiting on a black 60mm fan grill coming in to finish it off and it'll be good to go!